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User blog:Necrotifice/The True Weakness of Omnipotence
Hello, first of all thanks for reading.I'm writing this because too many times I have had a discussion with someone about characters who are either omnipotent or might as well be. Except that's not quite true, because it really just ends up being a discussion about absolute powers and omnipotence. I'm hoping this can be a resource for people to link to whenever this topic comes up, as it so often does on our Discord. This is a little long, so just scroll down for the tl;dr if you don't want to see my reasoning. So, which powers am I talking about here? I'm talking about Omnipotence and all of it's look-alikes. This includes Reality Manipulation, Vocifery, Mentifery, Choicifery, Absolute Wish, most variants of Ascended Physiology, and anything else that is a God-like power. A good rule of thumb is that if you could/do see God (Abrahamic Religion) as a known user, this is one of the powers I'm talking about. All of the Absolute Attack/Defense/Counter/Condition/Combat/Psionic Power powers, too. From this point on, I'll be referring to these collectively as 'Almighty Powers' because that's what the category for them is called on the Wiki. Note that some of the 'Almighty Powers' in that section can have toned-down version (i.e. Biology Manipulation), and those don't count - just the unlimited/absolute/total variants. Before getting into this discussion, it's also important to note that this article assumes that characters cannot exist beyond reason, and that reality exists in such a way to prevent paradoxes from occurring. There is literally no point to talking about characters who are "beyond reason and logic" because nothing can ever really be stated about them conclusively, and so no productive conversation can be had - every statement is reduced to "well, this is beyond logic so whatever can happen". That's not a discussion, that's just tedious. Now that we've clarified all of that, what's wrong with 'Almighty Powers'? Well, a fundamental rule is that an omnipotent character can't exist with another omnipotent character in the same continuity. Why? Because being omnipotent means being all powerful and maximully powerful. They have every power, they can make anything happen, and they have maximum power. If any other character in a continuity - that is to say the entirety of the story regardless of universe - is more powerful, then the other character isn't omniopotent. You cannot add the number 1 onto infinity or double omnipotence, it's either omnipotence or it isn't. This much is stated in the Omnipotence page, and it's not really up for debate - omnipotence definitionally requires that there be only one user per continuity if any. Anything else is just 'a very powerful entity'. Having established this, there is a corollary - a logically derived secondary rule that can be inferred from the first. No power can ever surpass or match an omnipotent being. This is why none of the other Almighty Powers can exist in a canon that has an omnipotent being. You can have an incredibly precise attack, but you cannot have an Absolute Attack if there's an omnipotent being in the canon. If you did, the other user wouldn't be Omnipotent because something could hit him, or you wouldn't have Absolute Attack because you can't hit the Omnipotent being. This means that, without allowing for paradoxes, there's a limit to how powerful anyone can be in that you cannot equal or surpass the resident Omnipotent being. There are some unique circumstances that should be addressed. If there isn't an Omnipotent being in your canon already, then you ''can ''potentially become the omnipotent being/have Almighty Powers. However, Almighty Powers have the same locking effect as Omnipotence - if one person has Absolute Attack, nobody can have Absolute Defense or Absolute Counter. To do so would require paradoxes to exist/resolve in some way, and again that isn't something a person can logically discuss. But I promised 'The True Weakness of Omnipotence', so here it is: even assuming that these rules are satisfied, or a character is allowed to be Omnipotent/have Almighty Powers by the resident Omnipotent Guy/Gal, there's just nothing to discuss. There's no debate to be had - it's academic. To have an Almighty Power means you can't be countered/stopped/whatever. Your power works, no ifs, ands, or buts. An almighty character has no challenges, so there's nothing to talk about with them. The worst thing any character can be is uninteresting, because these stories exist in part to entertain. Omnipotent beings wants challenge? Make themselves a challenge. Get tired of it? Complete the challenge, then make themselves entertained because they're bored. They can wave away problems with a thought. Obstacles are the main driving force of a story - you will hardly find any story where the characters face no adversity. To be almighty is to be able to conquer all problems, and thus almighty characters have the greatest weakness of any character across any fiction - they're utterly boring. tl;dr: At best omnipotent/almighty characters are impossible, at worst they are tedious and boring. Category:Blog posts